QIJIS : Qudus International Journal of Islamic Studies Volume 7, Number 1, 2019 DOI : 10.21043/qijis.v7i1.4365 CONTESTING SACRED ARCHITECTURE: POLITICS OF ‘NATION-STATE’ IN THE BATTLES OF MOSQUES IN JAVA Achmad Fawaid Nurul Jadid University
[email protected] Zamroni IAIN Samarinda, Borneo, Indonesia
[email protected] Hasan Baharun Nurul Jadid University
[email protected] Abstract This study aims to figure out a ‘political’ contestation of sacred mosques in Java and the ways the Javanese respond to the global architecture of the Middle Eastern Islam. By using a historical narrative method, this article describes a fact that some ‘sacred’ architectures which shaped from the national mosques became a site of battles between the modern Islamic and traditional Javanese worldviews and explores the continuum debate over architecture, culture, and power of Islam in Java through various events since the fifteenth until today. This study, finally, results in the issues related to not merely the almost unsolved dispute over modern and traditional architectures, between pan-Islamic modernists and Javanese traditionalists, but most importantly, the past stories and silent ideology behind the QIJIS, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2019 129 | Achmad Fawaid, et.al. building of these mosques, and by doing so, it also questions our primordial understanding of nation-state. Keywords: Islam; Java; mosques; architecture A. Introduction For many years, architecture has been regarded as a form of dominance and political strategy of colonialism. Much attention is given to the inseparable relation between architecture and pol- itics, and between agency, ideology, and history. Many incredible works are available for discussing the important discourse of such relationship partly in postcolonial society (Al-Sayyad, Nezar, 1992); (Anthony D King, 1976); (Gwendolyn, 1991); (Waterson, 1997); (Hasan, 2009).